Thomas Sangster biography

The son of two artists (his actor/dancer mother has appeared in several BBC films and his actor/musician father starred in The Lion King on stage in Germany), Thomas Sangster began his professional acting career at the tender age of eleven.

He made his debut in the TV movie The Adventures of Station Jim, then landed starring roles in two other TV movies: Showtime's Bobbie's Girl with Rachel Ward and Bernadette Peters and PAX Television's The Miracle of the Cards, playing a little boy diagnosed with cancer, opposite Richard Thomas and Catherine Oxenberg.

Thomas then landed the starring role as Barney in the BBC's five-episode mini-series Stig of the Dump (2002) and joined the cast of the long-running series London's Burning for the 2002 season.

Next, Thomas won "Best Actor in a mini-series" at the 2003 Monte Carlo Film Festival for his work in the TV movie Entrusted, playing a little boy kidnapped by the Nazis. He followed that up by taking on the challenging role of Adolf Hitler at 10 years old in the CBS TV movie Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003).

Soon after, Thomas made his feature film debut playing the son of Liam Neeson's character in Love Actually (2003). Ironically, the film also starred Hugh Grant, Sangster's distant cousin (Grant's grandmother and his great grandmother were sisters), although the filmmakers didn't know that at the time of casting. Thomas was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award and a Young Artist Award for his work in the movie.

Since then, he has played Colin Firth's eldest son in Nanny McPhee (2006), also starring Emma Thompson, and Young Tristan in Tristan & Isolde (2006). In 2007, he began providing the voice of Ferb in the popular Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb, which was made into a feature film of the same name, set to be released to theaters in 2013.

Sangster, who has never studied acting, says he's "not very good" in theater classes at school. He thinks that's because acting for theater is "more stagey than acting in front of a camera."

Despite his enormous success, Sangster has experienced rejection, too, including auditioning for the roles of Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, which he didn't get. However, since he's kept busy doing other projects, he wasn't too disappointed. In his spare time, Sangster's interests include painting, drawing, tennis and skating. He lives in South London with his parents and younger sister Ava.